PowerMac 6100/60 upgrade options

[Pizzaboy192]

I have a (mostly) working PowerMac 6100/60 with a 250mb SCSI hdd, an
Apple Cd drive, and the basics to get it running. It currently runs
system 7.0.1 and I was wondering how hard it would be to upgrade this
beast to system 9.x so that I can bridge it with a few of my other Mac
systems, and get the older ones online (ie: Classic, LCII, Performa
638CD). I do not have any larger hard disks, but I do know that my old
grade school ran system 9 off of a 200mb scsi drive in these machines
at one time.
I have the system 9.0.2 cd that _should_ work with the mac, but I
would really like it if someone could possibly "hold my hand" while I
upgrade this Mac, seeing as it is the last working PowerMac in my
possession (My 5400\180's screen imploded, and I don't have the guts
to remove the screen and flyback transformer to make my own
"TowerPowerMac".
Any help is GREATLY appriciated.

[Chuck Bush]

On 6/7/09 5:39 PM, "Pizzaboy192" <pizza...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a (mostly) working PowerMac 6100/60 with a 250mb SCSI hdd, an
> Apple Cd drive, and the basics to get it running. It currently runs
> system 7.0.1 and I was wondering how hard it would be to upgrade this
> beast to system 9.x so that I can bridge it with a few of my other Mac
> systems

I honestly think system 9 is larger, or else is very close to being 250 MB
when installed. My system 9 folder on my 7300/200 right now is 261 MB, but
it has fonts added.

One way or the other it isn't going to leave you much room to work with. You
can run a 2 Gig hard drive on the 6100 without any hacking. I would try to
find one on the swap list if I were you.

Chuck

[Clark Martin]

The following is from rather old memories so there is plenty of room for
error.

Yes, you can run OS 9.1 on a PM6100. There is an issue with HOW you
install it. Updating from OS 9.0.4 to 9.1 isn't a problem but
installing 9.0.4 is. I did the install on another machine (you have to
select the option to install for all machines). But there is a way to
do the install on the PM 6100. You might try doing a search at Apple's
support site, I believe there was an article on it.

--
Clark Martin
Redwood City, CA, USA
Macintosh / Internet Consulting

"I'm a designated driver on the Information Super Highway"

[Joshua Lewis]

I have a power macintosh 7100/80 

It has a powerpc 80MHZ CPU  1GIG hard disk and 104 megs of ram and APPLE cd rom drive 2X speed automatic, eject floppy drive, 2 meg video card, software mac os 8.0. its hooked up to a original apple 17" multiple scan trinitron. 

Well its a good ultimate power macintosh with a 1gig hard disk 104megs of ram apple cd rom and apple multiple scan 17" trinitron display very original. this mac was made in 1995 long time ago but the display was made in march 1994 so the display is 1 year older than the computer. I know about the history of the machine and the original owner. the original owner when brought the machine in 1995 the original display broke down it wasn't a 17" multiple scan trinitron it was 14" or 15" monitor originally. 

 thanks for your story about your power macintosh 6100/60 its quiet odd to have a few 100 meg hard disk upgrade it to a 4gig or 6gig or 8gig or 10gig hard disk. scsi hard disk can be quiet rare.

BY yoshua well thanks for your story.

[Joshua Lewis]

Whats your powermac 6100/60 like do you play games on it or do word processing or photoshop editing.

its a pain in the neck because original powermac have SCSI not IDE. IDE would be much better in these powermacs it would be much easier to install bigger hard disk such as 4 gig 6gig 8gig 10gig hard disks. At  home we boring old crappy pentium ones with 2gig 3gig 4gig IDE hard disk which you can get out of old pcs. SCSI is a pain in the neck they are so rare than IDE hard disks and SCSI cd roms. Its a pain in the neck with a 2x cd rom drive which is so slow.

When the original Power Macintosh where new in 1994 and 1995 486s and pentium pcs had IDE Hard Disks and CD ROM drives at the time. They still use SCSI in PC servers. 

By yoshua

[Larry Stotler]

On Jun 7, 6:39 pm, Pizzaboy192 <pizzaboy...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the system 9.0.2 cd that _should_ work with the mac, but I
> would really like it if someone could possibly "hold my hand" while I

I have a couple of old 2 SCSI drives from various servers and Macs.
Contact me off list if you want one. Some are 2-6GB. 50pin drives.
Cost of shipping it's yours

> upgrade this Mac, seeing as it is the last working PowerMac in my
> possession (My 5400\180's screen imploded, and I don't have the guts
> to remove the screen and flyback transformer to make my own
> "TowerPowerMac".

I also have an adapter that will let you hook an external monitor to
this machine(I THINK It will work - it came out of a Sun, but it's the
same plug and monitor pin out for the 2 row DB-15). You can have it
as well for cost/ship.

[Christian Wacker]

I _think_ i could put an IDE drive in there using a special ribbon
cable that i dug out of an origional blueberry iMac (Non-DV) where the
system board used SCSI, it had a slot load SCSI cd drive, and a 40gb
IDE HDD inside. I need to test this theory but i need to know how to
make the Mac see non-apple HDDs before i test this.
Any thoughts?

[Christian Wacker]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Larry Stotler<larrys...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a couple of old 2 SCSI drives from various servers and Macs.
> Contact me off list if you want one.  Some are 2-6GB.  50pin drives.
> Cost of shipping it's yours

Thanks for the offer, I shall see how much I will need to scrape
together and see about getting them shipped over here =)

> I also have an adapter that will let you hook an external monitor to
> this machine(I THINK It will work - it came out of a Sun, but it's the
> same plug and monitor pin out for the 2 row DB-15).  You can have it
> as well for cost/ship.

I have one of these as well... I just need to know what parts belong
to the monitor (the ones that can be disposed of in whatever way i
feel fitting) and the ones that are needed to make this system live (I
tried the system board in my Performa 638CD, but the PSU in it won't
do much.

Another question: I heard rumors that iCab will work on 8.5, is this
true, and would 8.5 be a better choice?
> >
>

[Dan Knight, LowEndMac.com]

Christian,

No such thing as an iMac with SCSI on the system board. If you want a
cheap Power Mac that you can drop an IDE drive into, beige G3s often
go for under $30 these days. Other options are the Performa/Power Mac
6360, 6400, and 6500.

Dan Knight, LowEndMac.com

[Christian Wacker]

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 6:48 AM, Dan Knight,
LowEndMac.com<lowe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Christian,
>
> No such thing as an iMac with SCSI on the system board.

I am 105% positive I pulled this cable from an iMac though. It has
only 1 IDE end, and I still have the hard disk from it, also IDE.
Taking those 2 small snippets of information, it would be hard to say
that a cable with 2 SCSI ends, and a single IDE end, along with a 40GB
IDE HDD inside, would still allow the Mac to use IDE instead of SCSI.
(who knows?)

I'll look into possibly getting a G3\G4 PowerMac (I hear that the
Blue\Whites are pretty nice... but a beige would do also) but does
that $30 also include the price to ship it as well?

Another question about the G3\G4 PowerMac, what ones would be able to
use parts that were also used in PC systems? I have alot of PC parts,
and I don't want to have to run around online to find upgrades for
this (except the processor, of course).
Thanks for all the help.
-Christian

[Clark Martin]

Christian Wacker wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 6:48 AM, Dan Knight,
> LowEndMac.com<lowe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Christian,
>>
>> No such thing as an iMac with SCSI on the system board.
> I am 105% positive I pulled this cable from an iMac though. It has
> only 1 IDE end, and I still have the hard disk from it, also IDE.
> Taking those 2 small snippets of information, it would be hard to say
> that a cable with 2 SCSI ends, and a single IDE end, along with a 40GB
> IDE HDD inside, would still allow the Mac to use IDE instead of SCSI.
> (who knows?)

The drive cable in slot load iMacs has additional pins that carry power
to the optical drive. It is NOT SCSI. Both drives are IDE.

[Christian Wacker]

that clears up everything, thanks =)
I guess that also pops my idea of using this cable to adapt my Mac... darn

[Joshua Lewis]

well a Imac G3 original blueberry which has SCSI inside very odd indead.

By Joshua Lewis Joshan...@gmail.com 

[Andrei]

I am a bit late to read my threads, but still :)

>> No such thing as an iMac with SCSI on the system board.
> I am 105% positive I pulled this cable from an iMac though. It has
> only 1 IDE end, and I still have the hard disk from it, also IDE.
> Taking those 2 small snippets of information, it would be hard to say
> that a cable with 2 SCSI ends, and a single IDE end, along with a 40GB
> IDE HDD inside, would still allow the Mac to use IDE instead of SCSI.
> (who knows?)

there can be no such thing like a cable having one IDE and one (or several)
SCSI endings, for a number o reasons (incompatible no. of pins, it wouldn't
work because SCSI / IDE use different protocols, SCSI needs device IDs
etc.). For SCSI you need to stick with SCSI equipments, and for IDE with
IDE. i am also unaware of controllers doing a conversion, but if they exist
they would be more expensive than they are worth it.

[Larry Stotler]

On Jun 22, 10:26 pm, "Andrei" <intelli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> there can be no such thing like a cable having one IDE and one (or several)
> SCSI endings, for a number o reasons (incompatible no. of pins, it wouldn't
> work because SCSI / IDE use different protocols, SCSI needs device IDs
> etc.). For SCSI you need to stick with SCSI equipments, and for IDE with
> IDE. i am also unaware of controllers doing a conversion, but if they exist
> they would be more expensive than they are worth it.

http://www.memoryexpousa.com/scco.html

Yep - Very expensive and very useless in most cases.

[Andrei]

this is an adapter with separate controller, no cable.
compatibility for macs is not listed there, but i wonder if this is
transparent or not to the system, and if it could be a true alternative in
the mac world. not that useless imho, though very expensive (and that's
normal).

tks for the link! had no idea that someone produces them.

[trag]

On Jun 23, 8:23 pm, "Andrei" <intelli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> this is an adapter with separate controller, no cable.
> compatibility for macs is not listed there, but i wonder if this is
> transparent or not to the system, and if it could be a true alternative in
> the mac world. not that useless imho, though very expensive (and that's
> normal).

The SCSI=>IDE adapter in that link is the Acard 7220. It works well,
has support for drives larger than 128 GB and is operating system
agnostic. It will also work with ATAPI devices.

It need not be so expensive. I sold over 30 of them for $39 each,
but I am out of them now. There was a seller on Ebay selling used
ones for $30 (but $10 shipping and no international sales), but I do
not see him in my search results today.

So the 7220 is sometimes available for under $50, although it doesn't
seem to be at the moment.

Jeff Walther